Hong Kong vcdYep, that's right; you heard it here first (unless you read it at Dvdmaniacs or on Amazon)!! The very enjoyable dark 1981 Hong Kong horror movie CORPSE MANIA is being released on dvd soon!!! (well, in October that is). It's coming out from Image in the US. I was about to air my worries about their fucking up previous releases by only supplying their dvd's with the wrong audio track (Mandarin instead of Cantonese) but in this case it really shouldn't be a worry as the correct soundtrack is the Mandarin anyway! The film is already out on a spiffy vcd from Celestial in HK and that one's only got the Mandarin dub. It was released in Hong Kong alongside another great, dark and gory horror movie; THE BOXER'S OMEN which unfortunately only had the Mandarin audio track when Image put it out on dvd (and in this case the correct audio is Cantonese). Anyway, if you're into dark horror movies then do yerself a favour and get it; it's great. Almost like a Chinese giallo murder mystery.
The US dvd
Original HK poster
Hey. Patrick B from Maniacs here. What the fudge is VCD? Been wondering about that ever since I saw it at DDD.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog btw.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteVCD is short for "video-cd". Normally DVDs are used for films, and CDs for music. However, it is cheaper to manufacture a CD than a DVD so in some places where people don't have so much money the film companies have come up with this idea of putting films on CD instead of DVD. This way they become cheaper for people to buy.
So price wise it's a good thing, but unfortunately that's also the only good thing about it: A CD can only contain about 70-80 min. so you have to have two discs to cover a film. The picture quality isn't as good as on a DVD. Some of them are alright, for instance the ones Celestial put out are quite good but many VCDs from other companies have really bad picture quality. Almost like watching YouTube. You can't have more than two audio tracks so there are no commentary tracks and there is no menu. So for a Westerner who can afford to buy DVDs there is really only ONE reason to buy a VCD: often they ONLY put out a film on VCD but not on DVD, so the choice is either buy a VCD or not get the film at all. Like the case up until now with CORPSE MANIA.
Thanks for your kind comments about the blog.